Francis Fukuyama:

Hegel was the philospher who famously thought that history had ended in his
time (and philosophy had ended with him). Hegel figured that the liberal
state born after the French revolution represented the goal of human
history. There was nothing after it: humans had reached the final state
of history.
Fukuyama wonders if Hegel might, after all, have been correct. After all,
fascism and communism have only been blips in the history of the last two
centuries. We are back to an age of liberal democracy. In fact, we have
more democracies than ever in history. To a distant observer, liberal
democracy has constantly been spreading throughout the planet.
What happens after the whole world becomes democratic?

Fukuyama shows that the progress of science implies a progress of society,
so a sort of unidirectionality in history. Society could cycle back only if scientific
knowledge were erased, something that he considers unlikely to happen (although
we live in the age in which one powerful group, the Islamic revival,
advocates precisely that and is waging war in multiple countries).
He then shows that this linear progress inevitably leads to capitalism.
However, liberal democracy is not necessarily the only possible realization
of capitalism. In fact, mainland China in 2009 is an excellent example of
capitalism implemented by an authoritarian regime.
Scientific progress has an economic implication (capitalism), but not necessarily a political one (democracy or dictatorship).
See "Reinventing State Capitalism" (2014) by Aldo Musacchio and Sergio Lazzarini.

Fukuyama interprets Hegel's theory of history as a "struggle for recognition"
by humans who are, first and foremost, moral agents (driven by a moral goal
rather than an economic or political goal). He refutes the notion (from
Nietzsche) that democracy would create spineless humans because capitalism
would still motivate that "struggle for recognition".
There will simply be a shift from military confrontation to economic
confrontation, like the one that happened after World War II in Germany and
Japan.

My view of Anglosaxon democracy is more pessimistic. Hegel thought that history was due to the
alienation of subjects who were enslaved by tyrannical regimes.
That particular kind of alienation is not gone: the citizens of any democracy
feel that the hierarchy of government is oppressive. Sure it is less oppressive
than, say, the Soviet government. But everything is relative: if all you know
is the USA in 2009, you feel that the USA of 2009 is oppressive compared with
how it could be.
In addition, Marx thought that the individual is still alienated in a liberal
democracy because liberal democracies tolerate capitalism and capitalism
inevitably divides society in classes, and the poor (e.g. the proletariat)
inevitably feels alienated. That particular kind of alienation is not gone
either: everybody is richer, and the odds that a poor person becomes richer
have vastly increased, but every society still lives with a colossal wealth gap
that certainly does not make the poor any happier. The proletariat is virtually
non-existent, but a hierarchy of social classes still exists. No matter how
rich a liberal democracy becomes, there will still be richer and poorer people,
and therefore alienated individuals. Marx's critique still stands, even though
his political predictions failed miserably.
In addition, one can begin to see another kind of alienation that neither
Hegel nor Marx had foreseen: liberal democracy tends to vastly increase
the addiction to what used to be considered vices, e.g. alcohol/drugs and
sex. These have caused all sorts of problems, from the collapse of the
family unit to the vast increase of mental disorders. There is virtually
no society that didn't see the number of drug addicts multiply after the
transition to democracy. Ditto for the number of divorces.
Last but not least, Fukuyama himself notes that humans desire, at a very
fundamental level, to be diverse and superior. A "just" society that treats
everybody the same is not what their genetic program makes them desire: humans
desire inequality. You are what makes you different from your neighbor.
In concluding, the transition from dictatorship to liberal democracy has not
removed the old kinds of alienation and it has introduced at least two new
kinds.

I also see two kinds of oppositions to Anglosaxon liberal democracy that
might prove successful each in its own way. The authoritatian capitalism
that was experimented by the fascist governments of Italy and Germany before
World War II and that now, under a different banner, has taken roots in China
is indeed a powerful economic force. Compare China with India: India
(a democracy) has trouble planning just about anything, whereas China can
proceed very speedily in whatever reforms make sense. A lot of developing
countries (that cannot afford democracy's mess) are taking note.
The second opposition to the Anglosaxon model comes from the Islamic world,
where an increasing number of people view Islam as politics and not only
religion, and view Islamic values as more relevant than democratic values.
From the point of view of both China and Islam, the West is trying to impose
liberal democracy by force. They both increasingly tend to view liberal
democracy as Western propaganda, as a way for the West to oppress them.
In both cases the meaning of technological progress is different from the
West's. The Chinese show little or no interest for theoretical physics or
higher mathematics: their main concerns are practical, and they mainly value
practical technologies. Muslims are often hostile to Western science as if
it represented an attack on the core values of their religion (an old attitude
inherited from the Catholic Church). For different reasons their understanding
of what "science" means is radically different from the Western one.
Hence Fukuyama's argument that scientific progress inevitably leads to
liberal democracy might be weakened by the fact that some places (China)
practice a "non-scientific" sort of progress and some places are just plainly
hostile to it.
It might just be that not everybody's "struggle for recognition" leads to
liberal democracy.